Between the Shadow and the Soul: Chapter 7/?
"Are you ready to go, sweetheart?" her mother's voice calls out as the sound of soft footsteps approaches her bedroom.
Frankie doesn't move from her spot perched against the edge of her bed, and when her mother pokes her head into her room a moment later, her little sister perched on her hip and already wearing her coat, all Frankie can do is clench her hands into fists and shake her head back at her.
"I don't understand why I have to go," Frankie replies, kicking idly at the overnight bag sat at her feet. "I don't want to, it's a stupid idea."
Her mother smiles sadly at her and bends down to settle Olivia onto the floor, leaving her to toddle around while she comes to sit next to Frankie, her fingers instantly reaching out to unfurl Frankie's own so that she can hold her small hand between her own.
"It's not stupid, Franks," her mother chides softly, turning to meet Frankie's eyes. "You've just gone up to junior high, it's important that you make some new friends, and this sleepover is a chance to get to know some of the other girls better."
"I don't want to get to know them better, they're all airheads, only into make-up and boys. I'm fine on my own. I don't need friends like them, and besides I have you," Frankie fires bulk sulkily.
Her mother sighs at her words, the argument between them so old and predictable now, that they both know how it goes, never seeming to change. "You need real friends, Frankie, girls and boys your own age," her mother reasons gently, wrapping her arm around Frankie's shoulders and squeezing. "I'll always be your best friend, but I'm also your mom, and as a mom I want you to have lots of friends, I want you to be happy and having fun, smiling and laughing always."
"They're not my friends though," Frankie objects with a scowl. "The only reason I'm even invited is because Kylie's mom and you became friends at that toddler play group you take Olivia and her little sister to."
Her mother frowns at her words, knowing them to be true, but wanting to be the voice of reason, she tries again. "Look, I know you don't want to go," she consoles softly, "that you're more than happy on your own, but please just do this for me, just this once. Just try and make friends at the sleepover and if you don't like it, I won't make you go to another again."
Frankie stares back at her mother quietly for a few moments, searching her eyes for answers. "Why is it so important to you?"
"Because you're my baby girl, Frankie, and I don't want you to grow up being lonely. You're such a sweet person, you're funny and kind and smart and you need to share that with people, even if it's only a selected few," her mother responds reaching up with her spare hand to lovingly cup Frankie's face. "One day, in the far away future, dad and I won't be around, and it would break my heart if I knew we'd left you feeling alone in the world. I want you to have people who know you and love you just as much as I do."
"Okay, I'll go, and I'll be nice," Frankie relents with a huff, feeling her mother's words washing over her. "But I'm not making any promises that I'll end up being BFFs with any of them."
Her mother smiles brightly in response and leans in to kiss her forehead. "That's all I ask," her mother replies. "How about when I pick you up in the morning, we'll go for pancakes, just you and me?"
Frankie smiles earnestly. "I'd like that."
"Me too," her mother says with a matching grin, squeezing Frankie a final time before getting up and swooping Olivia back up to her hip. "Now, come and put your coat and shoes on, you don't want to be the last one to arrive."
"What about you? Won't you be lonely if I go?" Frankie tries twenty minutes later, a final protest as her mother pulls the car up outside of Kylie's house.
Her mother laughs and shakes her head. "Your father is only going out after work to have a few drinks with Saul, he'll be home later to keep me company."
A few drinks, yeah right, they both know that's a lie, but Frankie doesn't press the matter, seeing the sadness lingering beneath the surface of her mother's eyes. "Do I really have to do this?" she protests again instead.
"Yes," her mother says firmly, but with a loving smile softening the word. "For me, remember?"
"Okay," Frankie relents, nodding her head, and knowing that she'd do anything if it could help ease her mother's sadness and bring her even a small sliver of happiness, even if it means doing things she doesn't really want to.
"Now go, and remember that it's okay to let people see your beautiful heart, and that I'll see you bright and early tomorrow, okay?" Frankie nods at the words, accepting the kiss her mother presses to her cheek with a murmured 'I love you, sweetheart' before getting out of the car and heading up to the front door, and watching reluctantly as her mother drives away with an encouraging wave as Kylie's mother ushers her inside.
Frankie wakes from her dream with a start, completely disorientated and drenched in a cold sweat as Chloe's name tumbles unexpectedly from her lips. She breathes hard against the tightness in her chest and presses her palm against her pounding heart as she tries to regain her senses, the backs of her eyelids burning with the blinding lights of sirens and the memory of her mother's words echoing loudly in her ears.
It's early when Frankie throws on her clothes and heads out into the cool morning air, the sun yet to have risen in the sky and a light rain spilling down from the clouds, the gloomy day perfectly matching her sombre mood.
She walks slowly to her destination, letting the rain cleanse her of the shame and guilt she feels for her behaviour towards Chloe the previous day and her actions the previous evening, and lets herself relapse into her old disgusting habit of smoking. Frankie knows it's ridiculously bad for her health, but something about the routine action of bringing it up to her lips, inhaling and then exhaling a chain of smoke as she feels her lungs burning at the vile taste, helps to settle her anxious nerves.
Frankie stubs the end out beneath her foot when she finally arrives, knowing her mother would never approve of such a thing in a million years, and takes a deep, shuddering breath to steady herself as she approaches.
She hasn't been here in a couple of years, her visits always having been a rarity, only ever coming when everything in her life feels impossibly jumbled and at a loss, but she knows she needs to clear her mind and find some clarity on this situation she's stumbled into with Chloe, and she knows that the dream she had last night is a sign that she needs to turn to the only person who could ever help her figure things out.
"Hi mom," Frankie murmurs faintly, dropping down onto her knees and reaching out to trail her fingertips across the cold stone of her headstone, sweeping them across the letters carved deeply into it and spelling out her name. "Hi Liv," she echoes, leaning forward to touch the smaller headstone next to her mother's. "I'm sorry I haven't come by in awhile."
She means the words more than anything, but coming here is never easy for her. It brings back painful memories that Frankie tries so hard to push to the back of her mind the majority of the time, and always leaves her feeling more fucked up than she already was before she came.
"Dad keeps calling me," Frankie says even as her eyes prickle with tears, figuring that she had better start with something somewhat familiar if she's ever going to be able to do this. "I know you'd probably tell me not to keep ignoring him if you could, but I just... I don't know how to talk to him. There's nothing for us to say to one another without you there to bridge the gap."
It's true, she knows it, and she knows her mother knew it. Frankie never has had the easiest relationship with her father, but it's only gotten worse in the years since the accident. She's never stopped being angry at him for being the one driving that night when she called home for them to pick her up from that stupid sleepover, his couple of drinks with Saul, unsurprisingly ending up being more than just a couple. Enough, in fact, that when he loaded her sleepy mother and little sister into the car to come with him to pick Frankie up that night, that he was far past the legal limit.
Frankie knows it was an accident, that her father hadn't meant to hurt them, but in his hazy recklessness, the car crash that he unintentionally caused resulted in the unfair death of her mother and little sister, and left his culpable, drunk ass, alive.
Afterwards, he could never look at her properly, claiming that Frankie reminded him too much of her mother for him to bear, but Frankie thinks his distance was partly because he blamed her for what happened too. He'd always been the one least sympathetic when it came to her resisting making friends, insisting to her mother that Frankie should just get on with it, and so the fact that she'd given in and called them only hours after her mother had dropped her off and asked to come home, in her father's mind, makes her at least partly responsible for what happened to them.
She knows too, that he also pushed her away because he felt guilty about what he'd done, but it was never quite enough to get him to take back control of his life and stop drinking himself into oblivion. Never quite enough to stop him being so selfish and to act like a parent and put Frankie's needs first while she continued growing up, never quite enough to give her the love and support she so desperately needed and craved while she grieved the loss of her family.
He might have lost his wife, but Frankie lost her mother too, and Frankie's never stopped resenting him for what happened, so even if he does partly blame her, she guesses in some fucked up way, they're kind of even.
Frankie's self aware enough to know that it's probably part of the reason why she's gotten so used to going at life alone, why she still struggles to properly connect with people on a deeper level, and why she feels too old and too jaded now to even know how to start letting someone in.
Without the continued guidance of her mother, and her forced independence at such a young age, Frankie never really learned how to make friends and lean on someone. It's why she's always found it easier to just sleep around, allowing herself brief tastes of connections, but never something too real, or too intimate to expose the truths of her heart and soul.
Except Chloe has somehow gotten to her, how exactly, Frankie isn't sure, but she's wormed her way past Frankie's hard shell and into Frankie's fractured heart, and left Frankie desperately wanting to go back to her for more time and time again.
Chloe makes her feel things she's never felt before, whether Frankie's prepared for all that entails or not. The dependency she's starting to feel is something Frankie has no idea how to handle, it doesn't seem right to her, surely it can't be healthy to be so reliant on one person, to be so vulnerable beneath their eyes.
The notion that she might not be able to rid herself of these feelings is utterly terrifying, and Frankie needs someone – needs her mom – to tell her how to deal with this without crumbling apart.
As the sun rises slowly, beautifully, in the distance, the wind picking up and whistling around her, Frankie swears she hears her mother's voice in the breeze, once again whispering, "I don't want you to grow up being lonely. You're such a sweet person, you're funny and kind and smart and you need to share that with people, even if it's only a selected few".
It makes Frankie think of what she shares with Chloe, of how Chloe has been pushing for them to share slightly more, despite her words to the contrary. Frankie knows, deep in her soul, that it isn't what it was when they started, that without them even meaning to let it happen, that it's changed somehow. It's gotten familiar, comfortable, more frequent, and so maybe Chloe is right in pressing for a little more, maybe they don't have to be together but they don't have to just be fuck buddies either.
Maybe she can do what her mother always wanted her to do, maybe she can find a way to give a little more of herself, to share a little more of her true heart, and make friends with Chloe properly.
Frankie thinks it's worth a try at least, anything has got to less exhausting than always being so isolated and lonely.
"What's this?" Chloe questions bluntly, looking up from her report as Frankie settles a cup of coffee and a croissant down in front of her.
Frankie immediately feels awkward beneath Chloe's impatient eyes, but forces herself to exhale deeply and smile. "Thought you could use some caffeine and some breakfast after you stayed working late last night."
Chloe's eyebrows pinch together at her answer and she slumps back in her chair, a heavy sigh escaping past her lips as she regards Frankie carefully. "I thought food was a friendly thing, Frankie? And as I remember, you made it very clear that we're not friends, so..." she drawls, handing the coffee back to Frankie and turning back to her report.
Frankie swallows thickly and squares her shoulders, determined to strengthen her resolve and push through this uncomfortable, difficult stage. She knew when she decided to do this that Chloe was probably going to be stand-offish and angry with her – Frankie doesn't begrudge her that for a single second, she knows what an asshole she's been – and so it's down to her to keep trying, no matter how many times Chloe rebuffs her attempts, to make things right between them.
"I was a jackass," Frankie voices as she sets the coffee calmly down again and waits until Chloe glances back at her once more before shrugging apologetically. "So just let me buy you a coffee, okay?" she says with a sheepish smile. "I'm... I'm trying here, Muppet."
Maybe it's the use of the nickname that suddenly sounds more like a term of endearment than an insult that slips past Frankie's lips that does it, but Chloe's eyes soften slightly, and Frankie thinks Chloe must see how difficult it is for her to swallow her pride, be the bigger person and make the first step, because Chloe accepts the coffee this time, sipping at it before nodding her head in Frankie's direction.
"Thank you for the coffee," she replies with a small hint of a smile, "and for the food, I appreciate the gesture."
Frankie grins back at her, feeling the crushing weight on her chest slowly fading away. "Okay, good," she breathes in relief, more to herself than to Chloe, and then, "We're okay, right?"
"It's just coffee, don't make it weird, Detective," Chloe hums rather teasingly, her cheeks dimpling cutely as she briefly flashes Frankie a toothy, reassuring smile.
Frankie knows that a simple cup of coffee doesn't put everything right between them, but when Chloe tells her to stop hovering and shoos her away, her eyes no longer holding anger but glimmering cheerfully like they usually do – like they're always meant to – in a way that instantly warms Frankie's heart, it feels like a promising start.